Gods of The Gray World
by Flint and Feather
Summary: Hellboy makes a lone, secret return to the paranormal dimension where a BPRD human agent was horribly lost, to seek out the forces responsible. Arabian djinn predators find him, first; in a sequel story to the 'Blood Sacrifice' chapter of my fic, 'Loving Liz'.
1. Chapter 1 Gray World

**A/N: A movieverse fic which follows up the mission in the one-shot chapter 5 of 'Loving Liz'. The flashback sequence of the mission tragedy is reproduced here, for convenience and clarity. Hellboy causes the Professor and fellow agents deep concern after he secretly returns to the scene alone for a showdown with a killer entity.**

**Disclaimer: The Hellboy universe and characters are owned by Mike Mignola for the original comics, and by Guillermo Del Toro with Revolution Studios and Universal Pictures for the feature films.**

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Hellboy had gone missing. Without a word to anyone.

On the second full day of his disappearance, Liz Sherman and Abraham Sapien were due for another meeting with Tom Manning at his anxious insistence, but the agents were then in no hurry to leave Prof. Bruttenholm alone in his burdened state. Their own conference on the same matter was as complete as it could be for the time being. Liz had spent hours with the elder as they analyzed her first hand account of the ill-fated mission, and all had drawn the one conclusion of Hellboy's likely response.

"I regret being unavailable for the initial exploration," Abe sighed. "With Red's own official report being left incomplete, only Liz and Agent Garcia can supply the physical overview of that dimension, and the true horror of agent Hart's death at the hand of the unknown entity."

"We were taken by surprise at every turn, Abe," replied Liz. "Given that, it happened to be – the fewer of us, the better. You needn't feel bad that you weren't there."

"Well, sir," Abe said, rising from his chair, "I apologize that we must leave you, now."

The Professor offered his hand to assist Liz up, seeing that her balance was as yet compromised with her left arm immobilized in a sling. "No doubt that my son has his reasons for keeping this particular secret, even from we three."

**. . . **

Director Tom Manning interrupted his state of irritation long enough to extend affable initial pleasantries to his summoned agents.

"Liz, are you having less pain? I hope to see you back in commission, soon."

"My temporarily gimpy arm won't adversely affect my usual skill set, and thanks."

"Look, folks," Manning proceeded into his pressing concern, "you know I have full confidence in your integrity, but ah -"

"But this is the second time you've called us out for answers, so you don't really trust us to let you in on breaking developments," Liz finished coolly.

"Surely, you expect that I need to reconfirm beyond any doubt that Hellboy's closest friends might be privy to information on his disappearance."

Scrupulously honest, Abe stressed, "None – absolutely."

"And again," Liz informed, "I had personally heard not a word from Red on any initial intention to go AWOL, or where."

"But, _you_ two -" Manning persisted, attempting to impart a certain modicum of delicacy.

"But nothing. He'd confided no pillow talk about his leaving, if that's what you're implying now. And he has _not_ made a secret check-in with me since." She and Red were close, fond of each other and she sometimes shared his bed, but there was no full-blown romance happening. Past a certain point, it was none of Manning's business. "It can only mean that he either can't, or won't."

"My own conclusion-" Abe stepped in, hoping to reinvest calm reasoning, "is that Hellboy, by his silence is protecting us from involvement in whatever he's chosen to embark upon."

"Be that as it may, my most rebellious and highly visible agent is out of my control, and off in hell knows where!"

"What more can we say, Tom?" Liz shrugged. "Red is his own man."

Manning pressed his lips tightly inward. "Take this, for example." He leaned forward over his desk with righteous courage of conviction. "Should I need to consider the mundane possibility that my missing person may have fallen down some set of hidden stairs here, broken his neck and was maybe lying there dead – wouldn't I do whatever it takes to locate him, starting within this complex of structures? And you _do_ know what it takes to effect that kind of search. Through heat seeking and various other strenuously applied methods, it's been determined that Hellboy is anywhere but here." He leaned back to reiterate a past unpopular suggestion. "And I hope you two now see the sense of accepting the installation of a subcutaneous chip."

Liz looked at Abe and spoke for them both. "Still a no, on that."

Tom Manning felt well inconvenienced, to say the least. For the two days following Ben Hart's murder, Hellboy had been close-mouthed and ill tempered. And then he was gone. The connection couldn't be lost on anyone familiar with the case.

And Liz had discovered in Hellboy's quarters, trays overflowing with heaps of kibble and both of his sinks filled with water to the brims; enough to sustain his pet cats for many days. He had gone to attempt a return, she felt certain, to that place of Ben Hart's death. Below its BPRD incident number and date, she had seen the virtually empty file given the code name – 'Gray World: Fatality'.

**. . . **

_**Four days previous...**_

_Their escape path_ as far as_ the grey horizon had looked safely clear at the time, clear at least of the alien tall rooted stalks that could sense their approach and aim low, swooping attacks to lash at them. And Ben Hart, then first ahead, had discovered how easily the limber willowy stalks were broken off their bases with well placed side kicks. He'd chosen a straight ten-footer to use, sweeping and stabbing at the ground as he tested to detect any spontaneous eruption of the traps they'd managed to evade behind them. Liz walked briskly several steps back beside agent Gill Sanchez, covering Hart with firearms drawn and keeping alert for potential danger in all directions. _

_It became perceptibly more difficult for the human agents to breathe. As Hellboy guarded the rear of his team, he felt a crushing pressure building in the angry, low hanging sky. It magnified and concentrated on him like a ton of iron descended on his shoulders, collapsing him to his knees, then to his hand_s. _ It vibrated again through his body, a hollow voice of demand, darkly fiendish with the promise of imminent devastation – 'Blood sacrifice!'. Some god-force of these plains dogged the agents unseen, commanding and manipulating hazards to materialize in their way. Hellboy felt more absolute that his team was being marked for retaliation. All or any one of them could be singled out for notice, but the force's creations weren't infallible. Only five minutes earlier, a dense grove of white, dagger thorned vegetation had shot up to enclose them all like a gigantic iron maiden, and Liz had swiftly laid down a swath of blowtorch concentration to burn a gap through, while Hellboy smashed away and held off the inner growth encroaching around them. The amputated trunks crouched and writhed, their limbs spurting thick streams of pale, corrosive ichor. The team had run through the sizzling rivulets, suffering little more than seared clothing._

"_It looks like it's screaming," Gill panted to Hellboy, glancing back. "Why is everything in this place only white, gray and black?"_

_No questions were ever answered here, either. The force held its name and origins silent, and Hellboy had drawn nothing from it except its choice to spike him with the unchanging cryptic threat. It now left Hellboy invested with the grim knowledge that his team had been designated as pieces in a macabre game. Their narrow escapes, it taunted, were soon to end. _

_He had to get up. Fighting to stay conscious as the force compressed his lungs, Hellboy kept a constant visual on his people. They looked recovered, now. Good. But Sanchez wheeled to come back to him. It was no random chance that he was the one held down hard, that he was too far away when he saw Ben Hart drop clean out of sight with a startled yell, and Liz diving to the ground after him. Just within reach of Hellboy, Sanchez was buckled to the ground. The young agent rolled to his back and sucked in a shuddering deep breath as the invisible crush began to lift away. Released, Hellboy immediately found the strength to curse his delay. He dug his boots hard into the peeling shale surface beneath them and bolted forward, revving another gear to join the new storm up ahead._

_He flung himself down beside Liz lying prone at the jagged rim of a sinkhole, her legs frantically kicking as she fought to resist a headfirst drag into the rising level of black, viscous fluid. Her hundred pound body was under hard strain with both arms stretched down painfully taut, sunk to her elbows in the muck._

"_Ben!" she managed to gasp,"Ben is drowning!"_

_Hellboy locked his left arm straight across the front of her shoulders to bar against the pull, and determined fast that Liz was overexerting to hold onto submerged Ben, just as tightly as he was clinging to her. He plunged his stone arm down by her hands to relieve her of the weight and clamped his fingers around something below, alive and moving as sluggish as anything sunk in a pool of dense glue. He could see there was no possibility of Ben's treading in this to keep afloat. Whatever else might be lurking below, Hellboy began to haul up his catch. Gill caught up to take Liz a safe distance away, where she crouched, trembling with pain._

_An obscene, morbid chuckle returned to make itself known...'Blood sacrifice!' _

_Delivered up by Hellboy's steady pull, Ben broke surface, blackened and shiny, spitting and exhaling blasts to clear his mouth and nostrils, his saturated clothing dragging at him. Hellboy leaned deeper over the edge to hook a solid arm lock around the slippery agent. _

"_Huh, Red!" Ben coughed, attempting a laugh, "It's the worst feeling in the w-" In a heartbeat, the pit ceased to exist, leaving Ben dangling in empty air between the walls of a narrow rock chasm. Hellboy gripped him hard and saw that far below him, the walls' strata were thrusting out to close the fault, locking together like a blindingly fast closing zipper. The demon rolled sharply to heave him free, but over the grinding clash of interconnecting rock, he heard Ben roar in agony. Still tight in his hold, Ben was immoveable; seized, crushed...and still alive. Liz and Gill...Hellboy's fevered glare flashed to find them before he wrestled off his coat and forced his arm down the fissure space at Ben's side. He found only pulverized flesh. _

_Sanchez made his hurried approach with Liz, bringing a field first aid box. What to do for a man this hideously mangled? He didn't have to stay blinded by the sticky black mess of the pit. As Ben sipped pathetic half breaths through his mouth, Liz carefully wiped his lids and the orbits of his eyes with sterile water and gauze pads. If only Ben could have been spared reviving from his stupor of shock. He hesitantly opened his red-rimmed eyes to find Hellboy near, the first to see his emerging distress become an eruption of helpless rage, then frozen disbelief as his hands trembled to explore the limits of what he had become. Ben clutched panting at his sternum, and stared down with stark realization that below this level of his entrapment, he knew what Hellboy had discovered – that his body was utterly destroyed. He curled his hands into shaky fists and thrashed at the ground, brokenly snarling his grief. Sprawled prone in front of the dying man, Hellboy stopped him by getting close up._

"_Bud!" he whispered, steadying his head, "If you've gotta hit something, hit **me**."_

_Liz choked back heavyhearted tears. What worse could be rained on them now? Anything, she knew. Anything. She forgot the ache of her useless left arm and crouched by Ben, taking his hand to hold. _

"_I'll break you out," she heard him say to Ben. But in response, the man reached his weakening right arm over Hellboy's shoulder and pulled him in tight. Their closeness and muted tones shut out anyone else. If Ben could talk...he had so little time left. He reared his head back in Hellboy's hand, seized by spasms of choking, his throat expelling bloody wisps and shreds of tissue. Hellboy drew him back into their private space, where Ben's shuddering clutch at his back intensified to frenzied clawing until he'd gathered up a fistful of the demon's shirt, and that, he clenched with white knuckled tenacity. His laboured efforts to speak faltered to faint rasping at Hellboy's ear. When Ben's cruel awareness of the ruin of his body and the future he'd lost mercifully dimmed out of his eyes, Liz watched Red lift away from their clinch, and his fingers move gently to close his lids. The malevolent player had claimed its prize, and Hellboy no longer felt the presence. White. Gray. Black...and hungry for the red. The most coveted sacrifice throughout every age of Man. He could have stopped all of this by being the first to bleed for it. He knew that now, too late, and his mind snarled a vow to the slate gray sky. "I got your weakness, right here! Learned it the hard way. I'll be back for you."_

_Red bashed away the rock pinning the front of Ben's body until he'd cleared the way to recover his remains. His duster lay spread out on the ground behind him. It was all the more grievous to finally lift Ben out, as his smashed vertebrae and spinal cord peeled away from the cliff. He laid him down on the tan canvas and folded his arms over his eviscerated torso. There was so little of him left. He sighed as he slowly covered him over and stood up. Red had seen enough of the monstrous rear wall to know there would be no respect in bringing home any more of the man who now rested concealed in his coat._

_Liz waved Gill to go ahead and leave her side. _

_He sombrely volunteered,"Red, I'll carry him." He knelt and respectfully made folds of the duster into a secure, compact bundle. When he got to his feet with the remains of Ben Hart in his arms, the look he cast back at his companions was glazed with haunted disbelief._

_Too spent to stand, Liz waited seated on the ground for the men to finish their tasks. Worried Red came to sit by her, and examined her disfigured shoulder as well as he could. She squirmed in the discomfort of her soaked, stiffened jacket._

"_This black mess," she sighed, utterly weary, "sticks like a mix of tar, glue and paint. I don't care how much it hurts. Please, get this off?"_

_He freed her from the encasement of her jacket with several strategic cuts, then carefully set her left forearm across her middle and used his shirt to bind around her. _

"_You need a doctor." _

_She frowned, concerned that her leader seemed so subdued. "Do we go home now?"_

"_We're going home," he answered, sounding tiredly far away. "We're taking Ben home. Nothing will happen to us, now." _

_She looked at him, not questioning his calm, understated confidence in what he'd said._

"_Red!" Liz swayed and snatched for the support of his arm. She trusted his stone hand at her back to hold her safe. "We lost him," she breathed, exhausted, "So sad and horrible, and I can't think anymore. Is it over?"_

_**. . .** _

Hellboy stood out like a vigilant lone red beacon on the endlessly flat, barren landscape.

"Just a whole lotta nothing." Everywhere he turned, he saw no variation in the all rock, temperate wasteland of his surroundings. "And a whole lotta nothing to do except wait to get noticed."

The environment's inescapable clay monotone disoriented his normal depth perception. There was scarcely any contrast, and his tall form cast no shadow. All appeared two-dimensional, felt depressing, heavy and lonely in its vast widespread sameness. The horizons, faraway crusty lines, met the identical neutral gray hue of the sky. That flat, low hanging ceiling spun slowly like a pinwheel crossed with a pattern of wispy black striations, cancelling their use as navigational points, plus being nauseating to watch for very long. His eighteen hours' previous exposure to this environment had been too short a time to learn anything of its atmospheric cycles. Until it happened, it was impossible to know if this bland, gloomy 'daylight' would morph into darkness.

It looked as though there had never been a living example of natural greenery here, to dry up and die. His team had twice seen some native colourless attack vegetation conjured to bust full grown through the rock surface. But they had killed those off without much trouble. He held his breath and strained his ears to listen for sounds of life. Not one. No such things as Gray world birds, insects or animals? This was a lousy place for them, anyway.

His first ugly, bitter experience of this dimension kept grinding at him. If he had one good thing to say, it was that the single odour of dry rock wasn't objectionable. He decided to find out what that murdering bastard, the Gray god, thought of a medium grade Cuban cigar, and lit one up as he paced without a secondary destination. All that he'd brought with him was secreted in the pockets of his duster. He welcomed the subtle, natural noise of brittle shale cracking under his boots, and watched his exhaled aromatic smoke drift off. Dammit. More gray.

As quickly as he became aware of an unseen encroaching presence, it had whispered its heated way around his head. He flicked his eyes shut as it molded momentarily to his face like a damp towel, then felt it rove on down his chest, snaking its invisible energy inside his coat, winding a serpentine exploration about his body. He found no substance to take hold of as the entity made its curious search of him, but there was nothing sinister, painful or sharp-edged about its intrusion. It performed some disturbed twitches and palpable recoiling motions, then seeped from his right sleeve to slither a clinging, inquisitive crawl along the length of his stone arm. It exited by sliding off the ends of his fingers. He assumed a firm stance, staying ready to retaliate. Just after it had seemed gone away for some seconds, it inflicted an impertinent, surprisingly solid push between his shoulder blades.

"What do you want?" he asked the empty air.

"Now, we begin. You have no right here. You owe a trade for passage to my land." A coarse, though discernible female voice spoke within his mind.

"What kind of a trade?" Next came a decisive slap against the outside of his coat.

"You _are_ a simple landbound brute of a demon impersonator, as my brother says. You carry valuable offerings together with repulsive poisons. Give me the offerings."

He grinned and reached into a deep inside pocket, closing his hand around some standard plastic soft packs he'd taken from the Bureau's blood bank.

"They're for the most powerful. Maybe you," he suggested with a feigned ignorance.

"_I _deserve them," she declared, "not him. I stake first claim to all you can supply."

He left the blood stash down in his coat, waiting for her next cue to help him figure on some approach to draw her out.

She turned critical. "Here, you _do_ know that one more set of eyes on your side could double your chances of survival. Your handmaiden – the spindly, fiery wench, is perhaps too fearful or unfit to accompany you again."

"So, you're new," Hellboy said, playing a nonchalant bluff to her obvious prior knowledge of him; going straight to the business of learning his enemy.

"Not new. My penalty relegated me to the background."

"That hardly seems fair." He sounded openly empathizing, though having no idea what she meant. "Why?"

"I forfeited the game with the burning. I failed to draw first blood."

"_You_ made the white thorn grove." His show of admiration appealed to her vanity. "It almost worked."

"You remember!" Her girlish pride abounded. "It cost a good deal of energy."

"Who are you?"

"The apprentice of my brother," she replied, in a tone flat with unmet expectation that he ought to know better.

No surprise to Red, that entity guarding her name. Still, she'd alerted him to the possible presence of a male. Where was he? When he took some experimental steps away, she followed him like a puppy, and again her invisible mass of heat hovered at his face.

"From the deeps of your being, I show you this."

Fine dust particles collected from the ground swirled upward into a dense column, and within it, an outline began to sculpt, gradually mimicking the entire shape and features of Liz, rendered in black, gray and white. The image remained slowly revolving above the ground, not animated, not responsive. He could only think how grateful he felt that Liz was at home, out of harm's way.

"That," he evaluated with a forced bland praise, "is as perfect as it gets."

The dust picture disassembled and was left to drift into a formless cloud, suspended in mid-air.

His hostess seemed to need to elicit some satisfactory astonishment from him with a sudden cruel suggestion. "Have you returned for a second chance to save your weak underling?"

Hellboy steeled himself to appear unaffected, but he couldn't look away as a second image began to form before his eyes. In the same way, she produced a faithful, colourless likeness of Ben Hart. Ben. Looking as he had before anything of this world had touched him – whole, healthy and sturdy in his insignia jacket, cargo pants and badlander boots. He'd as much as invited her to show off what she could do, and now had to stand up to the consequences. He had every reason to think that her capacity for compassion was as absent and corrupted as any he'd ever known of demon psyche. And he watched the revolutions of Ben's figure until she let the illusion dissolve away.

"And that is as perfect as the last," she pronounced, openly expecting his agreement.

"As perfect as the last."

Her exhibitions now properly appreciated, she said simply, "Follow. We go to my brother. For the moment, he sleeps."

She wafted by his shoulder, giving him a push toward her chosen direction. She made no use of a supernormal way of travel to hurry him along, he noted – just plain old-fashioned walking on his part while she guided from nearby.

"You're a mind reading physical medium." Hellboy infused his fishing remark with a tone of approval, and stayed well on his guard with only her heat to alert him to her position.

"A peripheral talent, when the presence is strong, and interests me." She promptly halted their progress to say, "And I see again – another of your acquaintance."

Hellboy damned himself for the necessary evil of bringing up the topic, and prepared to hide his emotional investment in whatever was to come. He gave his attention to the form now being carved from a third dust column, much larger than the others. The image coalescing was like himself, but not. Unmistakeable was the huge stone forearm worn by a solidly muscled male demon who stood on powerful legs ending in cloven hooves. He was clothed in a short armoured kilt with a heavy chain around the waist. A long pair of curved, fully grown pointed horns were rooted in his forehead, and between those horns, a king's crown was suspended in some kind of upright shadow. His eyes were deep set and as dead as in most statues, and the squared face was heavy boned, especially at the lower jaw. He was hellish menace and arrogance, all over.

When Hellboy was a teenager, the professor had sadly explained the lore of the destiny predicted for him as the future Beast of the Apocalypse. Of how and why the Third Reich had summoned him to Earth, intending to effect its own influence on the World War through alliance with him, a select prince of Hell. It was unthinkable that Hellboy should ever perpetrate that global horror of his own free will. He would have to remain constantly alert to recognize outside pressures from wherever they might manifest. He silently thanked Pop now for arming him against this kind of ambush, from being caught unaware should a mirror ever be held up to show him what he was seeing at this moment. It had been very upsetting then, and in the present, Hellboy studied this unimaginable, terrible being that she'd dredged up out of his subconscious. But he had to keep his cool. Maybe she could have got some wires crossed, this time. Whatever this meant, it could be worth it to keep her on his side.

She conversationally interrupted his disquieted thoughts, seeming to have no ability to sense the abstract of his inner emotional responses. She understood well enough what he addressed directly to her.

"Why you keep company with soft, weak beings, I can't fathom the sense." She sounded satisfied with a newly discovered agenda realized. "This brother of yours is one that I am moved to meet. He looks a rare match for the power of _my_ brother. Summon him to support you."

Thinking on his feet, he spoke to convince her of his familial ease with this 'brother'. "Are you looking for _my_ brother to whip _your_ brother?"

"Competition and wagering have become favourites of our diversions. I crave a fresh, unique player, and – one to fill my empty arms. Tell me his name."

"No names." Hellboy threw back the caveat, though he was flying blind. A name for that hulk still displayed before him, he'd never heard of. Didn't ever want to know it.

"The one trade you owe to me now, is your brother. I've decided."

"Well, I'll try hard for you," he answered. "He's been away."

Playing along with this seemed his one strategic option, for the time being. He stoically forced himself to memorize the image from all sides – every detail of this infernal alter ego, as he knew she must be doing now.

"Him, I will hold intact to enjoy," she informed.

"You might be in for a fall," Hellboy cautioned. "He's kind of a ladies' man."

"Leave that to me."

"And now you'll take me to _your_ brother, like you promised."

"It was no promise," she sassed. "But you furnish fine entertainment. Come."

Her attitude felt twisted, he thought, but he went on toward the one he'd come to find. She preserved the hulk's dust image to accompany them as Hellboy walked the path that she indicated. He'd spotted no geological anomalies since his arrival, but the place she led him to held a trench of steaming, thick gray soup of seeming liquefied rock. No other matter existed here. The lightly simmering surface emitted giant lazy half bubbles that rose to the top and gently subsided back beneath.

"You see, he sleeps," she said, with devious glee. "Now, you will hear him."

What happened next was the breakage of a newly forming bubble which popped open to release a rattling inhaled snore, cut off by a furious bellow.

"Intolerable, badgering female! What are you about, now?!"

Hellboy recognized that disembodied male voice. Tables turned. Ante upped. He wanted to openly curse her for rattling the cage, but he put her out of his mind and stared hard into the trench, awaiting the emergence of the awakened, pissed off Gray god. A hollow geyser exploded from the trench with an operatic roar. **"**_**Ah-OOH!**_**"** It resonated with stunning force like the visceral battle shout of thousands of ancient warriors, backed by the echo of as many spears pounding the ground in unison. It repeated in thundering bursts as the curled arcs of superheated rock collapsed and splashed outward in all directions.

Having failed to terrify Hellboy, it silenced to an echo all at once – and was followed by the Gray's expressed mood of pleasure.

"The hand," he purred through gravelly depths. "The blood bearing demon returned – the red stone prize, delivered up to me!"


	2. Chapter 2 Djinn Gambling Wars

**Hellboy and the competing resident 'gods' fall into a triangle of increasingly shady negotiation. (Reviewers will be thanked!)**

* * *

"_The hand," Gray purred through gravelly depths. "The blood bearing demon returned – the red stone prize, delivered up to me!"_

Hellboy sidestepped the last of the molten rebounds sizzling beyond the rim of Gray's lava trench, while keeping a sharp lookout on its liquid surface, on the dying away of concentric ripples. He wondered which way to jump, now that the bombastic invisible blowhard had located to an unknown somewhere else. He felt a wave of heat massing above, just before it dropped and arrowed down on him. For the sheer joy and release of it, Hellboy threw a right cross into the presence and kept on dishing out his burly brand of interference. Yeah – Gray was a scorchy radiator, too; even hotter when he began to buzz a searching arc around Hellboy's body. But Gray suddenly broke it off, then blew on past with an escalating indignant growl, away to something else that demanded his immediate intervention. The object of Sister's new infatuation had been moved a distance off from the hazards of the pit, and Hellboy knew that's where she'd be – smack up territorial beside it.

"Esteemed mistress of crafts!" Gray snorted. "What is _this_? My sister has assembled another work of grotesque imagination." His attention snapped back to Hellboy, for the likely obvious reason. "The red mauler – who vowed to again find this way to his dissolution-"

"Annnd your sloppy, wet welcome." With a sting of his own, Hellboy killed the cresting of yet another grandiose diatribe. "Stuck-up. Overcooked." He shoved aside the right facing of his coat, squared back his shoulders and clapped his stone palm over the holstered Samaritan. "I heard you didn't believe in me."

"I've since had talk with those who _do._" Gray punched up the attitude with his trademark drama. "Now, you think to lay insult with your slave's wage of iron..."

It was too early to know the details, but Hellboy read that slimy intent to impress him with the peril behind his hint of insider collusion. Still, Gray stayed off him, then changed his tune to one of oozing charm, saying, "I find merit in your artisan skill, Sister. You've well captured the tyrannical, demonic horned visage. The imposing physique and aspect of domination. The exaggerated mechanism of a hand and arm inscribed with symbols of a truly infernal cabal. Yet, you do not only embellish the mauler...but represent the very being of my own recent acquaintance."

Her reply burned with sarcasm. "No doubt, a royal warlord undiscovered amid the confusion of your historical studies. Leave off the flattery. I _feel_ your coveting. I will have this one, and you may deal with him that stands here now."

"Generous," he sneered, "that you designate the superior for yourself. This I personally know – he is far beyond your ambition to engage. When I move to capture his service, rest assured that you will enjoy a share."

"You gamble.." she said, "to lure the superior brother to surrender himself, and betray the Red! I will learn my desire's name, and bind him to me."

"A precipitous boast. Considering that your desire is not yet here in body, mine are the better odds." His next exclamation gnashed at Hellboy. "Tribute for your trespass, infidel!" 

Coolly unhurried, Hellboy sauntered up to stand beside his 'brother' image, smirking privately at Sister's readiness to trade him off at a moment's notice. He assigned Gray's overt lie the same due significance. "It's been settled – with the lady."

"She," Gray's voice descended to a guttural hiss, "owns no right of negotiation..."

"She does with _me._" Hellboy firmed the set of his jaw, and crossed his arms.

"The Red sides with me." Her bratty tone jabbed at the boundaries of Gray's tolerance.

"What benefit does he bring? What is there to recommend him?!"

"You think to shake me. You ought sleep less, Brother, as much has transpired and escaped you. It is your sloth to regret."

"And you, Sister, are ignorant of what I have laboured to gain in blessed privacy!" 

Listening attentive and amused to the escalation of their jealous exchange over his comparative value, Hellboy took offhand notice of how vast sections of the revolving sky's black streaks had now stretched into faint, spidery veins above them. He'd raised a credit to keep afloat – that his newly invented brother must be quite the guy to be haggled over this way. Was it his mega-thuggish looks? The super-sized arm? Gray was falling all over himself to use his first sight of her sculpture to shine up his own inter-dimensional high roller chops. Lizard brain. Wasn't everyone jonesing for top of the food chain? Ramping up the glory couldn't hurt.

"The prince," Hellboy cut in with a casual aside, "could take this over, as Sister's dowry."

"Not possible!" spat Gray.

"Could be a nice vacation place," he went on, surveying through his hands. "Change it up...put his circus maximus right over there..."

"No hellion, no djiniri, will disrupt the balance of my territories!"

"Brother, you've never before shown such fear that I could!" In her apparent flush of triumph, she swept immediately to Hellboy with a hushed purr of excitement. "The prince..my Lion.." Again, she sounded pleasured with renewed favour toward him. "Ignore the bleating goat," she whispered. "Come away!" 

He felt clutching force applied to his shoulders, but this time she gave him no level direction. And he went down. Zip-lined through a drop in blackness. When his feet struck solid base, a dense flurry of fine dust displaced high upward and hung about him in a powdery cloud. As it sifted back to ground, he opened his eyes and found the space lit enough to see that he'd landed in a low roofed cavern that seemed to stretch infinitely off to his left and right. He had little time to wonder if he'd been stranded alone when her heat streamed by him and away, guiding her demon copy.

"What's this place?" he asked her, wiping fine grit from his mouth with the back of a gloved hand.

"My own, my very own retreat. My gallery, and more." Her inflection brightened as she advised, "Pay them no mind. They will keep their distance, unless provoked."

He waited in stillness for the new mystery to make itself known and heard first, a chorus of overlapping high and low pitched hooting, and bestial snuffling sounds. The cryptically unidentified subjects slinking up as apparent live things from the knee deep dust medium, behaved like a pack of docile family dogs.

"Hyenas," he remarked when the last of them had arrived. "Why here?"

"Because my brother hates them so." Her escaped giggle mimicked the hyenas' subdued, witless mutterings. Then, she tersely directed, "Remain here. I go alone to pray." 

On his own, Red surveyed his dim, colourless surroundings of oddly smooth rock ceiling and walls, mapping out to memory whatever was visible. Above him, he saw no breakage caused by the forced entry of his entirely solid self. He counted fourteen striped hyenas lazing around him – some laid out asleep, some sitting on their haunches, some licking themselves; none showing any particular interest in him. But while he studied them, he marked intervals of their living substance seeming to flicker in and out. At times, their noise and movements froze, and they appeared as no more than outlines of particle transparencies like the others she'd formed. Two of the animals vanished entirely in an episode of fluctuation.

Surfacing was the djiniri's earlier mocking suggestion. His return for the chance to save his 'weak underling'? He'd get out of her what she meant; if there was any possibility of making it real. So far as she'd taken him to her place to hold off Gray, he was in a position to investigate whatever opportunities might turn up, and choose when to tip that hand. 

The stream of his contemplations was shattered by the intrusion of an imperious echoing demand. Gray.

"Send Soraya to me!"

From off somewhere, Djiniri retorted with extreme annoyance, "Soraya tends to her young in the nest, and here she will stay! Brother, accept that you've lost this stage of the contest. You'll trick no chink for sly entry!"

Hellboy caught the movements of another creature taking shape on a high ledge some twenty feet away – a fine large falcon pushing food morsels into the open beaks of eager, unfledged chicks. She veered her piercing raptor gaze for some seconds to stare in his direction, then resumed her nurturing duties. Two loud voices rattling from wall to wall seemed not to disturb her.

"I _will_ speak with the Red," Gray crossly insisted.

"You torment as a sandstorm!"

"You cannot prevent his hearing and response. He is to be mine, as agreed!"

As Hellboy heard the continuing arguments fly, he saw a second falcon glide out of the far darkness and alight at the ledge to deliver a limp captured rodent to his mate and family.

"As agreed," she affirmed, "yet, I did not specify _when."_

The djinn siblings weren't bothering to hide any communicated intentions, as far as he could tell. He was the 'simple brute'. Just another captive game piece – either the prize or the hot potato, subject to the switchups of pushing and pulling between them. He kept an urge to laugh under wraps.

"You'll not hold him from me!"

"In due time, fond Brother!"

"By means of his true name, I'll bind his service to me!"

"Proof!" she shot back, "The name!" 

He felt her sidle up next to him. Smelled her, too. Back from wherever she'd been, doused in sweet frankincense.

"Djinni!" Hellboy crashed in with what he knew for sure. "All you've shown me is how big you can splash and holler and -"

"_And_ practice brilliant arts of death in ways fashioned to entertain!"

"Real original – ambush kill of one man.."

"In the game of blood, the blood is all. The blood of untold thousands of dying hearts have drenched me. What should I care for your single unremarkable human?"

"Way to put a stink on it," Hellboy snarled.

No answer.

He ground out the challenge. "Say.. my.. name."

Again, silence hung apparently confounded, ahead of Gray's boast. "From the ranks of Pandemonium, the Beast will furnish me your own true name, shabby imitator. I know of the power of the Key!"

"Old news," Red chuckled darkly at Gray's implied parlay with no less than 'the Beast'. "A spirit of the Djinn – scraping your nose in the ashes, begging trades from my high level order. Nobody handed you a solid. Get real." He let two seconds lapse, then goaded, "I hear them laughing."

"Received as an equal, I begged of no demon!" Gray blurted in a face saving attempt. "By what fraud do you bear such a right hand? You, who are not the Beast prince?"

Hellboy could feel Gray chomping at the bit to be taken as a made friend of the hell region. This match came narrowed down to who was best at bluffing on the fly. He raised his stone arm and clenched his fingers into a solid club. "His seal, welded to me...as _his_ right hand."

"_He_ is the one true Key, and you – the mere shadow. His scout, his mercenary! What _are_ you, who once ran from me with your weak minions?"

Hellboy grinned to infuriate. "Favourite brother of the Beast."

"Ahhh.." Entertained by the Red's insolence and the brazen lashings of his tail, Djiniri drew out a sigh of approval. 

The silence held as Gray abandoned the argument.

"Djiniri, do you let him in?"

"Never, when I seal all space between us. He is odious to me." She paused. "How does my prince come to be called 'the Beast'?"

"Your lion," he offered convincingly. "No difference."

"What key do you speak of?" She laced her chagrined tone with suspicion of her exclusion.

"Just yanking his chain," Hellboy dismissed.

"No chain binds smokeless fire," she said, then returned to a subject of current high importance. "May he truly have gained a confederate against us?"

"Not unless he's found some traitor to buy off.." Couldn't let her get too comfortable. 

She changed moods in a capricious flash and called out, "Soraya! My beauty.." The falcon launched from her nesting ledge and soared gracefully across the divide. Hellboy saw her talons curve to grip a mid-air perch as she folded down her speckled wings. "Sweet treasure," her mistress cooed. "For the present, you will not hunt in the open above. I have provided."

The bird's head movements suggested that she was being nuzzled, kissed and petted.

"Bless her," she whispered, then extended the falcon closer to him on her invisible arm. "What think you?" Soraya bristled and flared her shoulders in agitation.

"I think she hates hyenas, too," Hellboy chuckled.

"And your differences. Her trust must be earned." Lofted upward, Soraya took flight and returned to her nest. 

The Beast model was being made to move. "We will go farther, this way," she began.

Hellboy held back. "I want quiet here, for a short time. But you can stay."

"Do you speak with my prince?" she whispered in undisguised delight, "and offer prayers?"

"That's right."

"As you stand?" She couldn't resist putting the question. He had not faced to the east.

"As I stand. Now, quiet!" 

He wanted to get straight the exchanges he'd had with her and Djinni Gray, the lies and deceptions on all sides, and to think over the possibility that he'd actually sent out appeals to Hell's capital city. Whose brains he'd tried picking there, Hellboy had no idea. And right in front of him was the crux of it, the Beast-prince that Djiniri dragged everywhere she went, like a seven foot tall pull-toy. He looked it in the face. _"If I ever wanted a brother, it sure ain't __**you**__." _

But it strangely gave him focus. If he or anyone else learned that name, and used it – was he this close to finding out if becoming that guy was a one-way sentence? Nobody could make him do it. Until the game was won, he'd have to stay the best friend of his infernal 'brother' and keep up appearances. It looked like Gray didn't yet have what he wanted, and maybe never would – maybe. 

"_Son!" _

It impacted like a punch straight into his central brain. Djiniri would be watching, but she asked nothing of him. He kept his yellow eyes open and untroubled, and his stance relaxed as he searched his memory for any recognition of the voice. "Now, what?"

"_What fresh hell is this?!" A chuckled quote replied. _

"Another player?" he assumed. "What's the use of you throwing in?"

"_I was of great use in siring **you**, favourite son, before you were stolen from the circle of your elders."_

He absorbed the stun of that identification, and stood without answer. He couldn't argue it away.

"_Come home." The invitation both urged and commanded._

"What for?"

"_Take up the reign of the prince you are meant to be."_

"You can keep it."

"_Realize the pride that I preserve in you as the Beast entrusted to bear, guard, and soon wield the ultimate power of the Right Hand." _

Without dropping his calm watchful gaze, Hellboy flexed the wrist of his permanent stone arm. Damn this unseen demon for existing; for knowing him this well.

"_The Dark Matter, the Dark Energy," continued the visitor, "stymies all humankind, and the vacuous Djinn. Through these, is the painful and hazardous channel to our eternal home. I would have you leave this broken plane before.."_

"You've heard of free will. Thanks for dropping by."

"_Do I stand aside and withhold advantage, knowing that the foreign and plebeian connive to enslave my son and the Prince within him? Kill them off. Finish it. Remember, and hold it close. I arm you with your true name –"_

"No.." There was no shutting it out.

"_Speak it, and return to us. Anung un Rama – your true father Azzael, does not abandon you."_

The voice quit as abruptly as it had come. The piece of reinforcement thrust upon him by the initiated demon was calculated to convince the djinn of his ties to the hell region's nobility. He was now better equipped to field and counter Gray's moves on that front. But for Hellboy, it was the most personally damaging confirmation, and his distrust of all three entities' agendas sharpened his guard. He'd put himself out there as a wild card. He, and anyone and anything else, were up for barter. 

Growing tired of his preoccupied silence, Djiniri piped up with a firm proposition. "You are never again, to listen to my brother. He seeks only for himself."

Hellboy looked in her direction, more steely than before. "No. I'll hear him. I'm aware that your djinn possessions can't be worked on me. I'm staying open to better offers, same as you are." Now accustomed to her ways, he felt how she flounced in frustration beside him. He pointed a stone finger. "If you've got a mind to cuff me, no more," he warned. "I've allowed all your pushing me around only because you're – a lady. It stops now!"

"Better offers?" she despaired.

"You, and your brother – want a lot from me. You both tell me what _you_ think I am."

"If I have not, I will show respect." Treading softly, she introduced praise. "I judge it most admirable that such a prince assigns you; and surely, you are otherwise uniquely gifted?" Her polite show of interest sounded forced as she awaited poised for reply.

"I do all right."

"I would know more?" she prodded coyly.

"That's all I've got," he grinned, knowing for them both, where her real curiosity lay.

"Then, the more of my Lion?"

"What do you offer to be accepted? He's nobody's lap dog."

"Accepted," she mused. "Of wives and concubines, how many?"

Hellboy swiftly decided the numbers. "Now, eight and twelve."

"I have lived much of my past as both."

"A word to the wise – no one _ever_ puts hands on him the way you -"

"In this, I have wisdom! Do not presume to counsel me on such!"

"And about your habit of jumping to argue.." He threw up his hands. "Why waste my time?"

"I _am_ pleasing," she fawned, "and will curtail myself. Tell more."

"If it makes you happy. I know he said..." He let her dangle while he toyed with retrieving the forgotten remark. "He said.." At last, he recited, "He called you a - a bountiful, buxom beauty."

"My prince's true words?" she murmured in appeased wonder, savouring. "You must relate all that my Lion says of me, as you receive it – and to him, give my acceptance of terms. A contract for lands. And you," she proposed, "I will treat respectfully, if by other means, you follow me.." 

Things began to move, fast. He watched a desert mirage spin shimmers of heat. They lengthened, swirled into a column of fire and stood on end, whipping up a vortex of cavern dust, exciting the hyenas into maniacal gibbering. Within the glowing nucleus, a visible creature came alive, commanding Hellboy's attention as she transformed into a white-furred bipedal being. A woman sized mammal, with silky haired arms upraised to roll back a fine fabric cowling from the dome of her canine head. Delicately, she flicked out a long tongue to moisten her black nose, and the lips of her muzzle. Her vertically set djinn eyes, rimmed with black fringes of interlocking lashes, blinked up at him for the first time.

She awaited the one reaction that Hellboy must supply. And he knew what it had to be. "Djiniri," he said, "your prince spoke true."


	3. Chapter 3 A Select Prince of Hell

**A****/N: Sequestered with the devious djiniri in her underground retreat, Hellboy contends with her bribes and manipulations, and invents some of his own.**

* * *

Hellboy took stock of his transformed dog-woman companion, and waited to see how her newly revealed visibility would affect their interactions. He was soon to find out that her need to be the one in the right hadn't changed.

"Don't think me sheltered and naive," she began, her vertical eyelids shutting tight as she then found it necessary to tend to an itch behind one upright ear. Her neck adornments, arm bangles and earrings jangled to the rhythm of her vigorous scratching. Completing that self-attention, she brought her white paw to eye level to inspect the manicured points of four elongated fingers and an opposable thumb claw. "A quest to gain only admiration and love carries little worth." Hellboy looked on without answer as she primped and arranged her cowl in a drape low on her forehead. "You must agree."

"Never had a reason to quest for it."

"Therefore, such things come easily to you," she assumed, showing him a coy canine head tilt. He gave her the merest of sly smiles. She lolled a playful curling tongue tip between her parted jaws. In the moment, a contented bitch.

"Come, now." She nose-pointed to a separate tunnel which forked away from the chamber of their initial entry. The hyena clan roused from its state of torpor and gathered to surround her. She let fall her cowl and floor sweeping kaftan, and looked down at the bulging purse belted around her belly, and the skin sheath holding a curved dagger. "You see?" she alerted, stroking the ornate grip. "I hold you under my protection, as when I am joined with my Lion, you will be also _my_ brother."

"Small, but mighty." Hellboy arched a brow ridge at her pretty little knife and the juvenile hubris of her declaration before she too, dropped to a four-footed stance among the hyenas. Subdued white firelight began to cast at middle height along the walls leading ahead of her intended way. "This I do, for the benefit of your vision."

"Works fine."

Her Anung un Rama figure picked up eerie movement to glide along with them. Except for the smaller falcon male swooping above them and disappearing into the far ahead darkness, there was nothing else to see beyond the members of their own gray, white and red procession. What he needed to find had yet to come within reach – and he stayed on guard to separate her realities from his, as they entered a part of the tunnel that spread out to double the width.

"I've been inside way bigger caves than this, in Tennessee and Kentucky," he told her. "They were carved out over ages by underground rivers."

She paused her steps. "I have heard these names you speak, within a New World wartime tale collected by my brother." Her envy crept out. " Do you wander often and far, at will?"

"As far and whenever I want."

An outside brash voice cut in on them. "Wartime tales! Sister, have you my ability to relate accurately to the Red?" Gray's politely inquisitive tone was laden with doubting sarcasm.

"Your tales, I have heard to distraction!" Djiniri flung back. "A plague be upon you, and your interference!" A chorus of yipping chatter rose up around her.

"Should it not be my continuing source of humiliation, that my sibling prefers the society of carrion gorging, filth-ridden canids to scholarly pursuits?"

"My societies exclude you happily," she sassed, "as without me, your own come seldom and are paltry few!"

"And I say to the Red, that my misguided sister belittles me unfairly."

"We together, Brother, are no less reduced to inglorious scavenging!"

Hellboy filed to memory their exchanged barbs, and figured that his expectations of possible ambush by rock rubble avalanche, stalagmite spearing or another sinkhole surprise, now seemed just too ordinary.

Djiniri pranced up to Hellboy, hopped to her hind legs and curled her paws over his arm. "Let us proceed now, on my desired path," she cajoled.

Instead, Hellboy called to the djinni. "Getting lonely out there?"

"I enjoy a depth of background which you have been given no opportunity to discover," he answered. "Exit her influence. Let us meet, away from her."

"Right now, I like where I am." Hellboy's desired reply visibly pleased her. "But go for it," he invited. "Knock yourself out."

Interpretation escaping her, she stiffened her forelegs and scolded, "Will you not speak plain?! He needs no encouragement to laud himself as at the pinnacle of military historians." Ignored, she slinked to her underbelly and lowered her muzzle to rest on her paws. Her eyes stayed fixed on him, her white tail scribing a sulky crescent through the dust layer.

"Historian!" Hellboy called back. "How long will this take?"

"Unappreciated, solitary Brother," Djiniri provoked with exaggerated pity, "_Do_ regale the red mauler with the tedium of your past."

In the tactless manner he shared with his sister, he asked of no one in particular, "Where shall I make introduction, to instruct a brute so shamelessly uncultured?"

Decided to take in the lecture, Red settled with his back to a wall as Diniri turned tail and trotted away.

"I go to pray," she snapped. Followed by her entourage, she passed into concealing darkness.  
.

Having bested his sister for the time being, Gray lifted his voice. "This I decry; that methods of combat have steadily evolved a remoteness which has contrived to rob me of the richness that formerly knew no end. Throughout eons past, when infantry and cavalry of all nations clashed in hand to hand savagery, and lifeblood freely drenched the ground, I formed the sentient layer beneath the fields of death. I bathed, I fed and revelled in its red bounty -"

"I heard you sniffed around the American Civil War." Hellboy couldn't resist the mischievous prod of an interruption. "It was plenty bloody."

"Stumbling western dogs!" Gray huffed back. "Sully me no longer with such recall. Now, to the exalted heroism of the warrior statesman and general far greater in daring and courage than the Macedonian and the Carthaginian. High above the preening Caesars and Frankish kings. Ultimately to become Sultan of Egypt and of Syria; the revered liberator, Salah al-Din!"

Gushing admiration, Gray narrated the events of his star's early political education by way of military expeditions in support of allied rulers against the common enemy; the crusader knight legions who maintained areas of occupation in the lands, and wanted more. Of how the young man had matured to survive every confrontation, and rise to the summit of power. The djinni sounded hungry for this chance to shine. Lonely was right, Hellboy thought, like he'd been waiting decades for someone new to hear him.

"When the high leader of Christendom fomented and unleashed upon our heads, the first attack of the unholy crusades, I bore witness and joined with my massacred faithful in the depths of mourning. I do not now concern myself with those dynastic founders, appointed viziers and emirs ruling before the great Salah al-Din. At his shoulder, I whispered of my devotion to his cause and thereafter, accompanied his campaigns. Watching over his sleep, I gratefully thwarted the Assassins' attempts upon his life." He stopped then to hail, "Red infidel, do you heed with learning?"

"You bet," Hellboy returned. "Heeding and learning." The djinni's absorption in his prideful oration supplied what he wanted to know. Nobody else had arrived up there for Gray to toy with.

"Now, to my Sultan's siege to win the Citadel of Tiberias, where he was to face as well, an incoming avenging Frankish force of twenty thousand. As before, I made full surveillance of the open terrain and deemed two stalwart hillsides as needful for me to occupy. I became those Horns of Hattin, drained all wells and instructed strategy to ensure my Sultan's triumph. I smoothed the paths of his cavalry charges, and the arrows of his mounted archers flew true and numbered as many as storms of locusts. His superior blessed horses, fleet and intelligent, carried his warriors to harrying attacks and retreat. I likewise unbalanced the lumbering beasts of many a heavily armoured knight, toppling the enemy to be dispatched on the swords of my infantrymen. The heat of our lands has ever been our ally, and together with the denial of water, the susceptible foreigners suffered and weakened greatly. And more still, under burning torment as my archers volleyed flaming arrows throughout their fading ranks."

"And your Sultan won again," Hellboy concluded.

"To his glory," he went on, "I chanted verses -"

"Look – I understand what you see in him. Take a break."

"There is more," Gray insisted, the windy braggart. "Much more!"

"Later. You can brush me up on Alexander."

Djiniri scrambled back out into the open to face Hellboy with an intent stare, and bounced on her front paws; a dog-woman anxious to resume her leadership.

"Where to, now?" he asked.

"You will see."

**. . . . .**

"_Ahhh-ha-haa..." _ The rumbling soft laughter of an unseen stranger broke the silence, floating about the scorching invisibility of the lone djinni. _"Historian! How self-aggrandizing in perspective; how biased are your selected renderings. You would convince that campaigns to preserve your Sultan's territories could not have seen victory, save for your participation."_

"Who be you?" Gray hissed, flying upward. "My Lord?"

"_Who speaks," _obliged the voice, _"is not your Iblis of the burning sands. A sire of princes, I am."_

"Name yourself, and lay down tribute!"

"_Contracts have been struck to settle your requests of my ancient house. My beloved son, the desire of your sister, prepares to arrive."_

"I requested nothing of infidel dark forces!" Gray protested. "Explain!"

"_I myself have heard you declare a pact of alliance with the heir to my hell region's crown. Heard your boast of a meeting and accord, with him. No matter that you neglected to present to me on that occasion. The fitting dowry tribute of your entire holdings has been decided." _

"I said as much to affront, to drive off the red dog of a lesser demon," he argued, apprehension speeding his words, "The impostor here present – who cannot have true connection to your house!"

"_My esteemed second son, here present," _replied Azzael smoothly, _"will govern his own considered actions with regard to you." _

"Infernal, noble sire...you are mistaken!"

"_Compound fallacies and derision as you will, Historian – to no effect." _

"Let us negotiate!" Gray awaited reply, then shouted his unheeded demand again and again as he darted his furious fire through searching spirals of higher and widening circles.

**. . . . .**

"And so, in your prayers," Djiniri inquired as they headed through her stifling, half lit cavern, "what more of blessings do you seek?"

"I dunno." Hellboy shrugged and looked down to meet her expectant, vertical-eyed gaze. "Maybe..world peace."

"How very incongruous a request, for your kind." But she immediately backed off her tone of critical judgement. "I myself, pray for freedom to wander at will, as you do."

"You're ready to trade off your home property. Makes me think you can go where you want."

She turned up her muzzle, giving him a brief flirt of dismissive superiority. "Your limited capacity will not permit understanding."

Red preferred those impulsive, rude utterances to any attempt at phony simpering manners. "Suit yourself, girl."

The side lighting was abruptly cut off and with his next forward step, he crashed his chest into a barrier of something smooth and tautly resistant. Under his palm, it had the feel of satin laid over a wide expanse of firm surface. He heard rhythmic light panting as Djiniri passed him by and instantly, a sliver of light appeared when her body parted the obstruction. A tent flap was drawn up high and beyond it, rows of braziers stood lit with white fire. The clearance accommodated as she drew her statuesque love object into the new ambiance. From no source that Red could see, sultry tribal music played softly within. The sinuous rhythm of measured drumbeats under the strains of flutes, strings, and tinkling cymbals drew his mind to images of snakes sidewinding over desert sands, and veiled dancers' undulating torsos.

Her tail wagged as she glanced back from the shelter's interior. "And you," she invited.

Hellboy walked inside ahead of the lagging hyenas and surveyed high above him, the sloped drape of a silken ceiling embroidered with patterns of stellar constellations and moons in phase. This heavily perfumed atmosphere, he found obnoxious to breathe. As Djiniri bounded up to the surface of a spacious elevated dais sumptuously covered with fluffy white sheepskins, he contemplated her dusty hyenas; fewer now, and dragging themselves along to flop down around the base of where she reposed.

"I await the appropriate compliment," she said bluntly, twitching her whiskers.

Hellboy scanned far down the tent's enclosure. Decorated and furnished in Arabian splendour, it appeared endlessly deep. Here, the dust covered floors were behind them. He strolled across the rich brocade carpet to examine a sidewall hanging; one of a continuous series of fringed tapestries illuminated with panoramas of palm trees and plentiful water flowing through shady oases. Panels of idealized paradise. Most looked shot through with an ostentatious amount of gold thread, but any resplendence was again muted by the absence of colour. Below them, crystalline quartz decanters and transparent etched bowls of sparkling gemstones stood displayed on pedestals carved from unblemished cedar. He studied the stately giant painted porcelain urns and mystical statuary placed to alternate between the fiery braziers.

Hellboy made a cigar search inside his coat and winked over at Djiniri, who had sprung up to perform a giddy play bow. Letting her die of impatience, he flipped open his lighter and kept his distance while the tobacco caught fire. He drew in a couple of slow drags, then returned to her.

"Your Lion tells me...that to know he'll soon lie here with you, leaves him swollen, again and again."

Djiniri flipped onto her back and ecstatically wriggled her shoulders and hindquarters from side to side, kicking her legs in all directions. He smirked at her exhibition of doggy joy as his exhaled smoke temporarily relieved him of the cloaking perfume.

She rolled upright to her belly again, her tail wagging at chipper speed. "Now," she beamed, "it pleases me to provide you with food and drink. I possess wild honey, and a cache of rare spices – ginger, black pepper, saffron and cinnamon among them."

"Don't need any." None of what she offered was in sight. Aside from their dance of distrust being well in play, he was strangely not hungry.

She perused the coverage of his coat, her muzzle wrinkling as she snuffed the air. "Assuredly, you conceal no sweet dates, wild hare, or flank of goat on your person."

"And you need to know," he coughed, his hand fanning his face, "that your perfume is way too thick." He frowned and shifted irritably.

She would allow no pall of discontent to interfere with her bliss. "All things of delight exist here!" she exclaimed, and stared away into the far reaches of the tent. Between the double rows of braziers, large shadowy bodies approached in silence; their gait ambling and unhurried. Djiniri sat up tall on her bed of pelts and grunted pleasured sounds of greeting to the new arrivals – an amazing trio of placid dromedary camels.

"Heed and appreciate." She beckoned Hellboy to her side. "She is Zinaida," she introduced, as a doe eyed gray calf came within reach. "Bless her. And her mother, Fatima. Bless her." The third and largest camel kept a dignified watch over them through long-lashed mild eyes. "The sire, Shadhan. Bless him. From these honoured creatures, much sustenance flows."

"This is true," Hellboy agreed, as he watched the baby nuzzle her mother's near transparent belly.

"Shadhan the Swift, I have created as tribute to join my Lion's champions."

"Camel races. Impressive. In the short time since you fell for the prince, you've whipped up brand new animals."

"My prayers have been rewarded so."

"What about your brother? Does he make anything of his own?"

"To an elementary and clumsy degree. His efforts have been shabbily incomplete." She sat up to proud attention. "As I am the steward of life, he is the keeper of death."

"Lonely, jealous guy." He grinned. "Not even a piece of camel."

Agreeably in her element, Djiniri uttered a gleeful yap and whirled into a frolic of chasing her tail, then jumped down to scamper at speed toward the rear of the tent. She soon returned on the run, with a trim white Arabian horse trotting behind. It halted at the sight of Hellboy, stamped the rug and reared into a stand of defiance, cycling its front hooves. Djiniri hopped in front of the stallion to feed something swiftly extracted from her purse, mumbling endearments. It calmed and nickered as she licked its velvety nose.

"You may approach," she advised. "Nizar, bless him, now sees that you mean no harm to his mares. Here stand Fairuza and Azizah. Bless them."

"No problem." Hellboy reached to feel the sweeping mane. "It's a guy thing." Djiniri seemed not to notice that his hand dropped down through the horse's filmy neck. It happened again as he tried to stroke the ears and elegant dished face with his flesh hand.

"A racer of matchless spirit, is Nizar."

"My brother asks now," he said, "If this magnificent stallion is meant for him."

"He is also for my Lion," she rejoiced, "to assure him of my devotion."

As real as she believed her creations to be – or not, he wanted answers. "I haven't seen a water source anywhere, or one blade of grass. Nothing for horses and camels – or hyenas to live on."

"I admonished my sibling," she professed, "that he ought not have expended such energy in taking only the largest of your servants, which did yield a supply of prized nourishment. It will please you to know that due to his immediate foolish wager, the lot was forfeit to my exclusive use, and there has been no waste." She was so practically dispassionate that he wanted to punch out her lights. "I had urged him to more efficiently take all four of your number."

"Your predator instincts," he answered tightly, "are pure logic."

She brightened. "And now that we two are again well met, how advantageous!" Then she let loose an injurious curiosity. "Why do you employ such weak beings? Are there no better resilient creatures to serve you? And, you have appeared to care for their welfare."

He didn't want the conversation, but had to improvise. "It keeps them loyal."

"Sound thrashings ensure loyalty," she corrected. "It is unseemly, and beneath your kind to adapt to preserving such commonly populous individuals."

Hellboy had to look away as she settled down to a demure sphinx-like posture between the stallion's hooves, and he showed the hardened flare of his eyes only to the beyond of where they had not yet been. When he turned back to her, he gave her nothing to see but his impatient composure. Obliging, she got up and lingered a moment to trade nose rubs with the mares, then took her place beside the figure of her Big Beloved.

"This way."

The camels and horses joined ranks to follow in obedient order. Hellboy watched Djiniri's gaily waving tail with an irresistible urge to drop-kick her fuzzy white ass, and grew more annoyed by the endless music looping again into an energetic tempo of frenzied celebration.

She brought him to the dead end of the tent where the braziers cast flickering light on something ghoulish stuck high on a wall of pitted rock. And it hit him full in the face – the overweening perfume could no longer mask the stink of a decay obscenely much worse.

Down from the ceiling line, an expulsion of rusty dry blood was spread wide and long. As he strode up close to inspect the mounted carnage, he bitterly recognized the make of a sturdy fabric crusted with the desiccated slime of burst entrails. Fragments of a crushed pelvis and shattered rib cage poked through the gore. Both legs, their splintered long bones nearly stripped of flesh, had been torn from the corpse and lay dumped on the fancy rug. Underneath one, he found a thoroughly destroyed Glock pistol. Hellboy's memory flashed back through every second of Ben's agony, and the one mercy to take from this devastation was the fact that he had managed to save his agent's heart and head from being part of this monstrous exhibit.

"Soraya...my jewel." Djiniri's crooning growl alerted him to the falcon gliding in silently over their heads. He saw the feathered legs outstretched in an unerring strike at the wall, to snatch away a fragment of flesh. Impaled in the clutch of talons, the scrap transformed into the shape of a small lizard, and the raptor wheeled on a powerful wing beat and flew off as swiftly as it had come.

"Know that a replication is within my ability. I insist that you appear pleased," she dictated, coldly final. Her jewellery was again tossed into jingling motion as she fluffed her coat with a shake from head to tail, then proceeded straight into her next proposal. "Since you will accept nothing else, I would extend to you a measure of hospitable comfort. For instance, an acquiescent maiden created in any image you wish; to perform compliantly all that you desire, and be entirely free of pox."

He shot back an icy yellow glare. "Huh? What kind of place are you running here?" It wracked him to hold down his livid rage; but now that the end was close, he'd reel out all the rope she could take.

Should she have been anticipating a lusty response, his puzzling bite of moral indignation caused Djiniri to wobble her ears and blink in confusion. But she immediately seized the substance of her remaining hyenas, and combined them into a new form already known to her. He should have expected it. Liz. It was no time for a reminder of how much he wanted her love. And he made no sign of approval. No move to approach.

"Perhaps," she attempted, "this one has become too familiar? One you have tired of?" He continued to seethe in silence as Djiniri performed a flourish of reshaping.

"Here is your female featured counterpart," she presented with smug satisfaction. "Only give her your blood, and she will come alive to your control for a useful interval." She unsheathed her dagger and helpfully offered it.

Staring the djiniri down, Hellboy snatched an edged charm from his belt and sliced the palm of his flesh hand. Drool dripped from her tongue as he closed his fingers to keep the appetizing red trickle in place. She had formed the horned female likeness as a full breasted body of the kind to appeal to a man, and he felt its minute tremor when he applied his bleeding palm to its gray head. Revolving it to face away from the maker, he saw through its fluctuating transparency how eagerly the seated white dog watched him. He searched the naked figure's unresponsive dull eyes while he took hold of its arms to manipulate through ranges of movement. It was worth a lot more than his small wound to test Djiniri's hint at her restorative powers. Satisfying in promise and acceptable in her view, they landed way short of the human mark. At most, this was all Ben Hart would be. Brainless and soulless. The pliable mannequin, he'd seen as he walked away from its vacant presence, was anatomically equipped to receive whatever the user might choose to inflict upon it.

Djiniri spewed her slighted backlash at his apparent refusal to take any pleasure from it. "Are you so immovable as a male? Another incarnation may suit you."

"Not a chance. It's not my way to get sticky with the dead."

"It is unthinkable," she huffed, "that my Lion should bear any semblance of _your_ passionless faults!"

Hellboy regarded her gravely. "He's heard your insults," he reported, "and you've gone too far."

Her ear points shivered and splayed limply down the sides of her skull. She whined a woeful, "A gift in amends!" And in panicky haste, she transfigured the rejected demon female into one more effigy – one so haggard and savaged, it was barely recognizable as Ben.

"It fails due to fatigue of the matrix," she excused. "Follow me back, and I will make new of your servant. Fueled by nourishment of blood, he will come in time, to perform simple tasks."

"No. Now that your starved hyenas are all used up, take it from _him._"He jerked a nod toward her precious Beast figure.

She scurried to stand guard over it, gnashing her jaws at his bold dare. "I will not!"

"_Poor, gullible child." _ At the address of this fluid new male voice, Djiniri flashed an accusing look at Hellboy. _"The newest diversion of my crown prince." _Its condescending sympathy came not from the mouth of her red companion.

"A name!" she barked, her neck fur standing on end.

"_One called Father," _the voice replied. _"My whelpish daughter in law."_

"What is this intent?" Her lips peeled back above her clenched fangs. "Why has he come?"

"Welcome to the family." Hellboy shrugged. "Ignore him. He's just messing with you." And he looked to the ceiling with a nod of acknowledgement that not at all placated her. Next up, he warned, "You'd better move fast now, to hide and protect anything you want saved."

She startled with a leap to her full height. "Saved!" she cried. "What danger encroaches?"

"First ahead, his packs of dragon dogs will come to exterminate all vermin. Like your menagerie."

"Why must such indiscriminate cruelty befall?"

"Standard operating. His quarters have to be set up to order. His legions will raise their barracks and a little palace, and after that's finished -"

She wilted, curling her tail between her hind legs. "My Lion...has such requirements? But I wish him to provide for me as well, in his home of imperial origin."

"In time. You'll serve probation here, and he'll visit if he gets the urge."

"His terms are grossly unequal!"

"I thought you were used to the likes of princes. Comforts in every port."

"Prevail upon his most Dread Highness," she wheedled, "to place me highest in his heart. My Lion exists as my faultless intuition has divined, from the vault of your own knowledge."

Hellboy glanced to reappraise her handiwork. "You've got him right – nailed how he looks on his best day. Sharpen up those lady wiles and do whatever you can," he counseled, his mouth twisting in a smirk, "to be the best he ever had."

"Do you doubt me, while showing mirth at my expense?!"

"Arguing!" he retorted. "And I want out of your deadly funk of perfume – in case you haven't noticed."

She gave his horn stumps a bristly glare. "Why are you damaged so? My Lion is crowned with innately majestic weaponry!"

"His choice."

"I believe you are shorn to bear a sign of punishment!"

"_My_ choice...you little snot."

"I will lose nothing to the purge!" She bounded off in dismay to sprint a herding circle around her cherished animals.

"Listen!" he ordered. "Pick up that I'm finished here. One – I've delivered you your jackpot. You get to marry for power. The prince says he looks forward to 'taming the tempests of your spirit'. Two – We're fireproof."

She stretched her lip taut above the thrust of her curved canines. "It is my right that you entrust immediately, the true name of my betrothed!"

"Not by me."

As her infuriated charge reached him, there was less of the snarling dog to see. "Beware...the mercy of my brother awaits you!"

"And mine knows where to find _you_." He goaded beyond her bearing with, "You could have run your _own_ life and property, just fine. There's nothing you can do about it, now."

She swirled her outrage into a cyclone of white fire and blasted him as he pressed back against the wall of death. In mere seconds, her attack boiled off the contaminated blood packs he carried, and the consumed shards of iron set off sparking explosions within her blazing form.

"Tickles, huh?" he muttered into the engulfing chaos of her shrieks and howls.

Heaving violent lurches to retch out the poisons, she battered him all the harder in the swell of her fury. He did nothing to resist and held there, until the dignity of cremation took the last of Ben Hart's remains out of her hands.

What she did next – he felt his back being mashed against a developing new recess, and he ducked under the guard of his indestructible arm just as she jammed him head-first into the cavity of a tight fitting rock shaft. And he went forced through the rough encasement like the chisel of a slow jackhammer. He chuckled at how it suddenly put him in mind of the birth process. The first life trauma of being squeezed through a little hole – except for this getting skinned up along the way. He snugged his tail down as flat as possible. She was making this delivery hard with hurt, and if she intended to leave him buried, he knew he could count on his stone fingers to gouge through anything. The hand grip of his old pal the Samaritan was uncomfortably squashed up into his groin. Being sprung from her retreat was shaping up to be a lot worse than coming in, but he welcomed every hostile shove of progress to wherever he was going. And he had a good idea, where.

"Crap! Uuuhh..."

But he wasn't alone. A whisper of caution followed him. _"Pain and hazard, my Son." _


End file.
